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It's going to happen anyway, so people should stop groaning about it so much lol. Atlanta will have a new world-class (something the Dome never was from the beginning) and will get it for less than other cities pay. Atlanta is lucky.

To the OP, I can't stand when people say "OMG! We can't even pay for schools and sewers blahh blahhhh!" But they don't even realize this money can't go to that. Nobody was mad many years ago when this tax was created, were they? Why the uproar NOW?

It's important to remember that, though slim, there will likely be a negative impact to hotels and car rental agencies from any new tax. A hotel room in Atlanta is already significantly more expensive than in many comparable markets, to boot. Also, who says the cost of the new stadium won't suddenly increase during construction?

1. What? This isn't a NEW tax. It's been around for years.
2. If I'm not mistaken, the Falcons would probably pay for cost overruns, at least that's how it was when most other new stadiums were built.

Honestly the city shouldn't have to fund any of it. Considering the dome is perfectly fine, if they want a new stadium make Blank pay for it...it's not as if he can't do it. Can't really compare it to places like Arlington with the Cowboys because the people out there are diehard Cowboys fans. Probably 70% of the people here don't give a damn about the Falcons or the Hawks.

We want them to start caring. We want the Falcons and Hawks to become more popular. College football also heavily uses the dome(and soon the new dome)

Here is my problem with the whole thing. Some fabulously wealthy rich guy / organization is going to threaten us! Give us your money or we will leave. THEN FN LEAVE. Screw that mentality. We should not be bullied around like that. We owe them NOTHING, NOT A DIME.

Never, ever take this kind of mentality into a hostage situation.

I bring that up because this is a sort of hostage situation. The Falcons WILL get a new stadium; the only question is where--downtown Atlanta, the 'burbs, or outside the state of Georgia. Atlanta's economy would take a hit were the Falcons to leave, no question. And I cannot stress enough what that would do to our image losing two major league teams in less than a decade.

Look, we need to address public finance of sporting venues. In theory I'm against it wholeheartedly. But not is not the time to draw a line in the sand and let ideology trump pragmatism. Doing that never leads to good results. Ever.

Everyone seems to ignore that the Dome is 100% tax dollar funded and is due for some major maintenance soon. The money is coming from the hotels and motels that benefit from the stadium. Not your tax dollars. That tax will go to maintain the existing dome if they don't go towards this replacement (that will then be maintained by the falcons). And at the end of the deal the state gets to keep the stadium even after the falcons paid for basically all of it. And the suggestion that it only benefits private entities is false. The falcons playing there is not the only thing that happens there. Concerts, bowls, state championships (for a lot of different sports). Half the stadiums use is non-falcons related.

If you were running a theme park and someone offered to pay 80% of the cost and all the maintenance to replace your old expensive to maintain roller-coaster with a new state-of-the-art roller coaster, would you take that deal? Who is really getting the bad end of the deal here?

The stadium will get built. Deal said No to the $300M and Blank agreed to pay the extra $100M, so Blank is desperate for this new stadium to increase the teams worth. 4 playoffs in 5 years ain't bad, there's about 28 teams that would change places with us. The location is important, keep it downtown, south of the current Dome, so its accessible by MARTA.

I'm on the fence about this, personally. But these days I'm leaning towards a new stadium, provided that it's south of the existing Dome.

I'd really like a masterplanned sports complex with a new football stadium south of the dome, and a new baseball stadium on the current Dome site with plans to relocate Turner Field over the next 10-20 years (by which point Turner Field will be 30-40 years old). All perfectly transit-connected and walkable from area hotels, and with some sort of sporting event (basketball, baseball, football, and potentially soccer and hockey) happening >50% of the days of the year. That's how I would like to envision downtown looking by 2035.

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